I will need to get a laptop in the foreseeable future, and I really want to stick to Linux. However, I may need to be out-of-home for 12+ hours straight in a day. After some research, it seems people are generally not that impressed with battery life on Linux?

The laptop does not need to do anything heavy duty, as I will remote back into my already very beefy desktop back home.

I guess a common solution to this light use case is M2 MacBook if one wants to completely throw battery concern out of the window. Well… let’s just say it’s a love-hate relationship.

  • scottywh@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Battery life on laptops is always over exaggerated regardless what OS you run.

    12+ hours of actual battery life during use just doesn’t happen.

    • Still@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      yeah I put Linux on my 2019 XPS 15 back in 2019 and went from 4 hours of usable productivity time to 4 hours of usable productivity time

      battery degradation is a much bigger issue than Linux vs windows

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      12+ hours of actual usage is doable on Apple Silicon, but it does depend on what your usage is. If you’re compiling something 50% of the time then probably not. If you spend most time writing code and then testing the application after compiling? Yeah it’ll last you 12.

      I know that’s not what OP has and it’s not what they should get for Linux usage, but I’ve worked with 3 now (one personal, two at different jobs) and these things are the holy grail of battery life. First day on my M1 Air, taking it off the charger, 2 hours in it had used maybe 5% battery watching a udemy course and playing around in xcode.

      So I think we should demand better of our laptops. I do believe AMD has done a lot, they had an entire generation where all they advertised was the increased power efficiency.